Welcome to the Apache MyFaces Project

The Apache MyFaces project provides an implementation of the JavaServer™ Faces standard. On top of that implementation, a lot of libraries are provided that add extra functionality and/or make it easier to work with JSF.

Some history

Apache MyFaces started out back in 2002 as the first open source implementation of the JavaServer™ Faces (JSF) standard. In July 2004, the project became part of Apache as an Apache Incubator project. In February 2005, MyFaces was promoted to a top-level Apache project. By the time MyFaces was submitted as an Apache project, it was already more than just an implementation of the standard. As the set of components defined by the JSF standard is rather limited, MyFaces went beyond the standard by adding more components and extended versions of the standard components. In April 2006, the extended components were separated from the core JSF implementation. From that moment, the components are in a subproject called Tomahawk, and the core JSF implementation is in the Core project.

Over time, Apache MyFaces was further expanded by other subprojects. Some of them added even more extended components, while others focused on other extended functionalities such as persistence scopes and annotation-based validation. Support for the use of Facelets, instead of JSP, was also added. After the JSF 2.0 specification (JSR 314) became final in 2009, work began to create JSF 2.0 editions of a number of MyFaces (sub)projects. Besides creating JSF 2.0 editions of existing projects, also some new, JSF 2.0 specific projects were added to the MyFaces family.

Overview of the MyFaces family

The table below gives an overview of the currently existing MyFaces projects and provides links to more information for each project. Click the hyperlink in the first column for more information on a specific project. If you're just looking for a JSF component set, watch the 'Component set' column. The last three columns give information on compatibility of the projects with different versions of the JSF standard.